Thursday, December 17, 2015

Free at last!

My professor walked by while I was studying this
morning at a cafe, 'animo' he said as I cried silently
(in Spanish, claro)

I’m done!!!!!!! With finals that is…after three hours of pouring
(almost) everything that I learned in my history class on to (unlined) paper, I’m
done! I was really nervous about this final because I didn’t know what to
expect. In reality it ended up being like most of my other finals, a broad
statement or question to comment on or develop aka write down everything you
know. Since I’m used to psychology finals with extremely specific questions
this format has been a bit troubling. How much is enough? Is this relevant?
When you say comment, do you mean include my opinion? When you say develop and
give me a broad statement, can I pick some aspect to focus on? It’s a struggle.
I’ve found that the best method is to just start writing a soliloquy,
explaining whatever it is to the “audience”, as if the topic came up in
conversation and they have no idea what the other person meant by it. It
usually ends up turning into a bit of a rant (here’s to hoping that my
professors have a sense of humor and can handle to sass!) but I just assume that
makes it a bit more interesting to read. I feel really good about this one
because I really went at it and didn’t really stop to think about anything. I
had no idea how much time had passed and when my professor came in after 3
hours I was a bit surprised.

This final was for my regular class which meant it was a class with a
bunch of other Spanish students as opposed to my other classes which were in Spanish,
with Spanish professors but with other Americans. I preferred this class 100x
over my cursos concertados. It was
way harder to understand the professor but he was just so much more interesting
than my other ones and somehow, even though it had 90 students it felt way more
like an SBC class.

The class was on “Modern European History” (basically the 16th
century with a little bit on each side). It was quite interesting and in light
of being done I’ve decided to give you a basic summery because sharing is
caring:

Yupp. That’s pretty much it. If I wanted to be more specific I could put
in something about the ‘power of the monarchy’ but let’s be honest that falls
under the theme above and I don’t want to be redundant or overwhelming or
anything. I’ll just let that sink in.

I’m also pretty much an expert in European geography now, but only in
Spanish. It didn’t occur to me until literally two seconds ago that Borgoña, a
super important area that we studied, was “Spanish”. Yeah, apparently it’s Burgundy.
That’s why my friend looked at me like I was crazy when I was talking about
Felipe I. Oops.

ANYWAY, now I get to enjoy Christmas in Sevilla and prepare for more
traveling adventures! I always forget what it feels like to "be free" from responsibilities at the end of the semester. It's great. Amazing. Beautiful. I’d tell you where I’m going but one time before I went
to Burkina I had a nightmare about someone stalking me because of what I posted
so you’ll just have to wait to hear about the trip until I get back. I can tell
you that I’ll be traveling for about a month and both solo and with friends. I’m
not bringing my laptop so I’ll have a lot of writing to do when I get back! I
also have a lot of writing to do before I leave to 1. Hold you over until the
end of January 2. I don’t want to be behind when I leave. Okay, I’m off to
organize all my travel information and put it on my handy dandy memory stick so
I can print everything out in the morning!

Stay tuned as my posts will be coming at you rapid fire over the next 9
days!! (omg 9 days until I leave…what?)